Lethal Shot
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Dedicated to all those who have served or will serve, and to those who support us. Thank you Sam, Will, Ollie, Ellis and Kate for helping me realise true happiness.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author alone and should not be taken to represent those of Her Majesty’s Government, MOD, HM Armed Forces or any government agency
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special acknowledgements to:
Robert Smith: without my chance meeting with him there would be no book.
Jeff Hudson, whose attention to detail, and extraordinary ability to capture the nuance of the moment, have been the keystone in the writing of this account.
Thank you:
Mum, Harry, Dad, Gran and Bang Bang for an amazing childhood, and for providing the foundations for the man I would grow to be.
Thank you:
All the servicemen and women I have had the privilege of working with and for. Thanks for an incredible career and, most importantly, for keeping me alive!
Last but by no means least:
Toby Buchan, and the editing, design, production and sales and marketing teams at John Blake Publishing and Bonnier Books UK, for allowing me the opportunity to tell my story; a process that has had immense therapeutic value. Thank you.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgements
Maps
Glossary
Prologue FIRE A LETHAL SHOT
Chapter One ARE YOU SURE YOU WERE ON THE RIGHT STAND?
Chapter Two AND THERE’S THE MARINE WAY
Chapter Three YOU’RE WHERE YOU NEED TO BE
Chapter Four ARE YOUR FEET DRY?
Chapter Five BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
Chapter Six KOSOVO, AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ – AND PECKHAM
Chapter Seven IT’S MY TRAINSET NOW
Chapter Eight WE NEED TO MOVE THE WATERMELONS
Chapter Nine IT’S ONE OF OURS
Chapter Ten BLUE SHIRT’S DOWN
Chapter Eleven DON’T YOU NEED AN OVEN TO COOK PIZZA?
Chapter Twelve THE AMERICANS HAVE LANDED
Chapter Thirteen WE USED TO BE THE HUNTERS
Chapter Fourteen HAVE I GOT EVERYTHING I NEED?
Chapter Fifteen LET IT BURN
Chapter Sixteen MOHAMED MOHAMED
Chapter Seventeen NOT THE CAVALRY
Chapter Eighteen THAT WOULD BE ILLEGAL
Chapter Nineteen GO FIRM
Chapter Twenty STEER OFF
Chapter Twenty-one PASSED ON
Chapter Twenty-two MENTIONED IN DESPATCHES
Plates
About the Author
Copyright
MAPS
Area map showing the various checkpoints (CPs), Herrick 14, Helmand Province, May to October 2011
CP Mulladad
CP Toki
CP Daqhiqh
GLOSSARY
2ic second in command
66 light anti-tank weapon firing a 66mm unguided rocket
ANA Afghan National Army
AO area of operation
AOR area of responsibility
ARG Amphibious Ready Group
BDA battle damage assessment
BRF Brigade Reconnaissance Force
CAS close air support
Casevac casualty evacuation
Cdo Commando
CP checkpoint
CTC Commando Training Centre
ECM electronic countermeasures
EOD explosive ordnance disposal
EOT explosive ordnance team
FAC forward air controller
FET female engagement team
FOB forward operating base
GPMG general-purpose machine gun, 7.62mm calibre
HIIDE Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment
HLS helicopter landing site
HVT high-value targets
ICOM brand name of a type of hand-held radio or walkie-talkie, used to designate radio chatter among local Afghans, especially insurgents
IED improvised explosive device
ISAF International Security Assistance Force
LRRP (commonly called LuRP) Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol
LZ landing zone
Medevac medical evacuation
Minimi 5.56mm squad automatic weapon in service with British forces
MSR major supply route
NVGs night-vision goggles
OC officer commanding
OEF Operation Enduring Freedom
OIC officer in charge
OMLT Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team
PDT Pre-Deployment Training
PRC potential recruit course
PTI physical-training instructor
QRF quick reaction force
R1 code term for a reaction force
RMR Royal Marine Reserve.
ROE Rules of Engagement
RPG rocket-propelled grenade
SA80 British standard-issue 5.56mm assault rifle
SF Special Forces
SFSG Special Forces Support Group
TAC(P) Tactical Air Control (Party)
UGL underslung grenade launcher
WMIK Weapons Mounted Installation Kit (for Land Rovers)
PROLOGUE
FIRE A LETHAL SHOT
‘We’re moving along the coast. All eyes are on the starboard flank. Enemy soldiers could be anywhere. The ship’s already been attacked several times. We’ve done plenty of attacking too, don’t you worry. We’re looking, we’re looking, we’re looking. Most of the country has been taken back but you only need one insurgent to cause damage. That’s when I saw it.’
‘Saw what, Granddad?’
Ten-year-old me was on tenterhooks. Like I always was when Granddad shared his war stories.
‘Movement, Robert. Up there in the hills. We thought the buildings were empty but here and there were definite signs of life. One of the buildings had a chimney roaring. In Greece, in September. What are the odds on that?’
I didn’t know anything about the Greek climate in 1944, not at that age, but if Granddad thought it was suspicious, then so did I.
‘What happened next?’
‘So,’ he said, ‘we raise the alarm. Every gun on that battleship points into the hills. Then the order comes.’
He paused. Smiling at me. Waiting.
‘Fire!’ I shout.
‘That’s right. And that’s what we do. All of us. We rain hell on those offices and houses. We can see them disintegrate before our eyes. Suddenly one of the doors opens. The one with the chimney. Dozens of German soldiers come running out, but they’re not carrying guns. They’ve got towels wrapped around their waists, some of them not even that. It was a bath house we’d been firing at, you see. The men had been there for a wash.’
‘Did you kill them?’
He went silent. The sparkle in his eyes dulled.
‘Did I kill them?’ he repeated. ‘Not intentionally, Robert, no.’
‘Why not?’
‘I couldn’t bring myself to fire on a naked man,’ Granddad said. ‘It’s not the way we do things in this country.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I strafed them all the way up the hill. Everywhere they ran there were bullet holes a few inches behind them. A few of them would have got ricochet wounds on their backsides. I couldn’t get any closer.’
Couldn’t or wouldn’t? I had to ask.
‘You can only do what your conscience allows,’ Granddad said. ‘It takes a hell of a lot to fire a lethal shot.’
I laughed. I was ten. I couldn’t help it. I was raised on the cowboy films of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood and the wartime escapades of Richard Burton and that man Clint again. Thos
e guys shot anything that moved. Didn’t they?
‘Someone needs to watch a bit more closely,’ Granddad laughed. ‘Duke never shot a man who didn’t deserve it. Clint neither. None of them did. I hope you never learn for yourself what it means to take a life.’
He could never have known that one day I would take that shot for myself. That I’d look into a man’s eyes and make the decision to end his life. The first time is the hardest, but it never gets easy. Each kill is as horrific as the last. But it’s what I’m trained to do. I’m a Royal Marine. We train longer and harder than any other section of the British military with one purpose: to be able to defend our country or attack our enemies more effectively.
Do I question the times I’ve taken a lethal shot? Sometimes. Do I doubt I made the right call? Never. The decisions I made, the shots I took, saved lives. Lives of men and women under my command, as well as the lives of countless people I’d never met and probably never would. I removed murderers from the field of play during a time of war. Men who were hell-bent on killing me and mine and didn’t care about innocents standing in the middle. Even if those innocents were their own people. Those are the reasons you do it. Those are the reasons you make a kill. The only reasons.
There’s one question you ask before you fire a lethal shot.
‘“Will my action save lives?”’
In every instance my answer would be ‘yes’. Just like it would be for every other Green Beret I served with on tour. When you’re on the battleground, when you’re in theatre, when you’re dealing with unknown adversaries who would kill you and display your mutilated remains in a tree as soon as blink, that’s all that matters. You just hope your bosses, the men who put you in that position, who guide your every decision, will back your play. Only military men know the horrors of what truly goes on. Only they can be your judge. For me and my men, when it came to taking a life, our bosses always had our back. Just as they should.
But not everyone was so lucky…
CHAPTER ONE
ARE YOU SURE YOU WERE ON THE RIGHT STAND?
‘Can you see him?’
‘Over there.’
‘Where?’
‘Ten metres in front of me.’
‘You need to get closer.’
‘Roger that.’
I’ve got the target in my sights. He has no idea I’m here. He’s alone. At least for now. I’ve no idea how long I’ve been following him. My hands and knees are black with dirt. I’m sweating.
I move forward, slowly, through the undergrowth. I’m nine metres away. Then eight. Seven. Six. I have to time this right. One false move and I’ll lose him.
The target’s in a heavily overgrown area. Tall trees all around. Cornered.
Four metres away. Close enough. Time to act. I’m out of ammunition. This is going to be bloody.
Go!
I spring from the bush. Sprint forward. My heart’s racing. I launch myself at the target and we both hit the ground.
A few seconds later I look up and see a friendly face. He’s more than friendly: he’s laughing. Laughing at me.
‘You made a right meal of that, Rob,’ he says. ‘It’s only a bloody pheasant.’
* * *
I was born in the Queen Mary Hospital, Roehampton, in south-west London, on 9 May 1976 to Clive and Tina Driscoll. According to Dad we came from a long line of Irish O’Driscolls, but the ‘O’ got lost on the trip over to England. Dad is as English as they come, a proper South London geezer if you hear him speak. Mum’s background is also Irish, particularly the Catholic part of it.
Home was a flat in Putney, for a while anyway. When I was two we moved out to Cheam in Surrey where I was joined by a sister, Bonita, and a brother, David. I don’t remember much about those early days except Dad not being around much. He was working on the ambulances when I was born, which meant he was out all sorts of hours. Then shortly after our move he signed up for a police training course. The college was only up in Hendon in north-west London, but it might have been on the other side of the world for the amount of time I saw him. He’d go up to Hendon on the Sunday night and not come back till the following Saturday. I remember watching him leave the house one day. I was holding his leg and crying, begging him not to go.
‘Come on,’ Mum said, ‘he’ll be back soon.’
And then one day she stopped saying it.
As a kid you never really know what’s going on in the adult world. What I can say is that when I was about eight my parents split up. Dad had passed his course and was a fully fledged bobby and somewhere along the line he and Mum had fallen out of love, I suppose. As was usual in those days, Dad moved out and we stayed with Mum. I missed him every day but kids are surprisingly adaptable. I saw him most weekends and never felt I was missing out. I loved hearing stories of him fighting crime and chasing criminals. Even when he admitted how scared he’d been policing the Brixton riots, I just wanted to hear more.
If Dad wasn’t around for the weekend I’d often spend time with my granddad, Alfred Jones. Granddad was Mum’s dad. He’d served in the Royal Navy and fought in the Second World War like his brothers, not all of whom had returned as physically unscarred as he did.
In Granddad’s stories the Navy always came top. Except when they ran up against one particular branch of the UK forces:
The Royal Marines.
‘Those damn Green Berets,’ he said, ‘they were just that bit better than us at everything. That little bit fitter, that little bit bigger, that little bit more prepared for everything. If we got a draw against them it felt like a win. Not that we ever admitted it.’
He didn’t need to. The facts spoke for themselves. The Marines, I quickly learned, beat the matelots, as they called the sailors, every single time. At everything. Football, rugby, drinking, chess. You name it. The Marines excelled.
But there was one opponent even the Marines couldn’t beat. Once in a blue moon Granddad would move on to an anecdote that would lead to a story that would end up with memories of the D-Day Landings. And that’s when he would shut down. Grandma or Mum would normally shepherd me away at that point. But often they wouldn’t be in earshot. That’s when I’d hear him talk about the fellas he knew who took part in D-Day, the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944, who risked their own lives and – despite their superior training and their habit of winning every challenge they ever met – never came back.
Never. Came. Back.
It was usually at that point that Grandma came in with a tea for Granddad and a reason for me to head out to the garden to play with my brother and sister.
Then, I remember, when I was eleven, we were all together to watch the Remembrance Day parade on television, after which Granddad went out to meet some friends down the pub. When he came back for dinner there was the usual chat from me and my siblings while Grandma served the roast. But at some point, my granddad just started to cry. Boom, out of nowhere, the tears just started to roll. He didn’t get upset or angry with us but it was enough for my gran to usher us out of the room.
‘What’s wrong with Granddad?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Now why don’t you watch some television and I’ll bring you some ice cream?’
Years later she told me that offering dessert was easier than offering the truth: namely that Granddad had lost so many friends in the war, from the army, the air force, the navy and particularly from the Marines. Every 11 November was hard. Whichever Sunday that Remembrance Day fell on was even worse. For Granddad, when the whole nation stopped for two minutes it felt like a lifetime. He told me once, ‘It’s not that I don’t like the military, but I lost a lot of friends during the war. I’m not sure I would do it again.’
Granddad’s wasn’t the only military voice in the family. After the separation, Mum met a new fella, Harry. He was ex-army, and proud of it. He’d done National Service in the East Surrey Regiment and been deployed to Cyprus when all the trouble was happening over there. That was his war. Sometimes I got a glimp
se of it. Harry was a big old unit and he’d boxed his way through his military service, winning regional championships even. He loved to tell me of this bout or that, the bruisers he put on the canvas and the odd time he was on the ropes. What with all the sport Granddad did and now Harry boxing every day, the military sounded a right laugh. I think that’s the side of things Harry in particular wanted to share. But every so often, like Granddad, he’d start a story and then go quiet and sombre, and close his eyes. You knew he was picturing the bloodshed he’d witnessed outside the ring, recalling the friends he’d lost to injury or worse.
‘War’s not a game,’ Granddad used to say. ‘It’s not like football or boxing. Sometimes everybody loses.’
* * *
From time to time Granddad would say he never wanted any of his grandchildren going into the forces. He especially wanted us to steer clear of those nutjobs the Marines. What he didn’t know is that my military training had already begun. But then, I didn’t know either.
Because of his army background Harry saw the value in routine and order. Especially where teenagers were concerned. Every day he would make us lay out our school uniforms, as well as keep our rooms spick and span, be punctual, things like that. If we did it well we’d get pocket money at the end of the week. That seemed a fair trade to me. The fact we were being groomed in the art of soldiery went straight over our heads.
There were a lot of things that passed us by. I don’t think Harry’s divorce from his earlier marriage had been pretty and I know Mum and Dad’s wasn’t, but somehow I only saw the positive side. Instead of two parents, I had four, once Dad had remarried to Anne. Did I wish I could have seen the old man a bit more often? Of course I did. But policing isn’t a nine-to-five job. You don’t rise up through the ranks to become Detective Chief Inspector, or bring the killers of Stephen Lawrence to justice, by watching the clock. Even when we were together, I remember watching Dad a couple of times and you could see he wasn’t there. He always had a problem at the back of his mind he was trying to work out.